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ShineSoldier on YuGiOh
Deck Analysis: The Amazoness Deck
April 19, 2006 

A friend of mine, Cameron Waud, came with the idea to create a competitive Amazoness Deck, so I’m going to do that now. The Amazoness Cards were released in Magician’s Force – at least, that’s where the main cards were released. Amazon Archer is also considered to be an Amazoness and she was released in Labyrinth of Nightmare. After Magician’s Force, we got Amazoness Chain Master as a Promo Card, who was used by Mai Valentine in the Yu-Gi-Oh Television Show already.

Let’s take a look at all the Amazoness Cards together.

Most of them are Warriors, that’s point one. Amazoness Tiger is a Beast-Type Monster, but that’s the only one out there.

Furthermore, Amazoness aren’t that strong – that is of course only without any support. Amazoness Paladin is the strongest one, with 1700 ATK points, followed by Amazoness Swordswoman and Amazoness Chain Master, who both have 1500 ATK points. Then comes Amazon Archer, with her 1400 ATK. Next is Amazoness Fighter, with 1300 ATK points. Amazoness Tiger comes afterwards, with its 1100 ATK and the last one is Amazoness Blowpiper, with only 800 ATK points. 
 

The next thing we’ll discover is that none of them is a Tribute Monster and all of them are Earth. Having no Tribute Monster usually means that you’ll have to build a deck with monsters that don’t have such a high ATK value. The fact that they’re all Earth gives them some support: You could use Gigantes or The Rock Spirit with them and Gaia Power can power them up to some big beaters, athough I wouldn’t recommend using Gaia Power.

Being Warriors means that they’ll be easy to search, from the deck and Graveyard. Reinforcement of the Army and The Warrior Returning Alive both take care of this.

The Amazoness have their own support S/T Cards. Not that much, but some. They’ve got Amazoness Spellcaster, which switches the ATK of one of your own monsters with one of your opponent’s. Then there is Amazoness Archers, an absolutely amazing card. It’s a Trap Card that can be activated when your opponent attacks while you have an Amazoness on your field. All of your opponent’s monsters shift into face-up attack position, even face-down monsters, and their ATK is decreased by 500 points for the remainder of the duel. And if that weren’t enough! All of those monsters will have to attack during that turn – and with their ATK decreased by 500 points, it’s most likely that your Amazoness will beat all of them. Finally, there is Dramatic Rescue. Another Trap Card that can be activated when one Amazoness on the field is targeted by a card effect. This includes Chaos Sorcerer, Sakuretsu Armor and Snatch Steal. Then the targeted monster returns to its owner’s hand and the owner then summons another monster from his/her hand. It could be very useful in some situations.

Now that we’ve met all of the Amazoness Cards, let’s try to find a main strategy that works well with these monsters. Amazoness Paladin and Amazoness Tiger can be turned into real beaststicks – both have 1900 ATK if there is one other Amazoness monster beside themselves out. These two cards could be really solid options for Amazoness Archers. With 1900 ATK, they’ll be able to take out any monster with 2400 ATK and right now, that’s about the highest ATK value commonly seen (the Monarchs).

Beatdown or Aggro might be a main theme, but the other Amazoness aren’t as good at it as these two. Amazoness Fighter and Amazoness Swordswoman can negate the Battle Damage that you would receive in a battle involving them. Amazoness Swordswoman even deals that damage to your opponent’s Life Points! Amazoness Chain Master, Amazoness Blowpiper and Amazon Archer all have different effects that have nothing to do with each other. This is why I’m not going to add any of these three cards in the final concept of this deck, except for maybe Amazoness Chain Master. Amazon Archer is useless most of the time, since having three monsters (assuming you don’t want to destroy herself) on the field is very rare. Amazoness Blowpiper isn’t that much of a good card. Her stats are horrible. With only 800 ATK and 1500 DEF, you’re not going to stay around a long time and decreasing one monster’s ATK by 500 points for one turn isn’t great either. Amazoness Chain Master is a risky card to use. It could give you a very useful card, but it also could make you completely waste 1500 of your Life Points if your opponent isn’t holding any monsters. Still, one copy of it won’t hurt the deck that much.

Well, we’ve discovered two main strengths of the Amazoness: Life Points protection and Beatdown. This isn’t a very good combination, since you would like Amazoness Swordswoman to have relatively low ATK points so that you can get the most out of her effect, but in order for the Beatdown strategy to work, you will have to increase her ATK in some way. Even though that will decrease the usefulness of the Swordswoman, that’s still what I’m going to do. The effect of the Swordswoman will then be a back-up so that if you’re in a tough situation, you’re not going to fall prey to a mass loss of Life Points in one turn. To increase the ATK of your Amazoness, I’m adding Command Knight. It’s a Warrior with a solid 1900 DEF that increases the ATK of all Warriors by 400 points. This makes your Amazoness Paladin even more dangerous than it already was. Too bad it doesn’t work with Amazoness Tiger.
 

A main focus of a Beatdown Deck is to take out your opponent’s monsters in battle and his/her S/T Cards through card effects so that you’ll have a clear field to attack into. That way, you can quickly take away all of your opponent’s Life Points. This deck is capable of taking out monsters in battle, and with the S/T removal we’re going to add later on, it can take down those S/T as well. But what this deck could be really good at, is decreasing the Life Points of your opponent quickly, thanks to the effect of Amazoness Archers. A nice card to combine it with is Ojama Trio. It summons three Ojama Tokens on your opponent’s side of the field in defense mode with only 0 ATK. However, with Amazoness Archers, they’re switched into attack mode. And if you’re lucky enough to have an Amazoness Paladin out, together with an Amazoness Tiger (this forces you to make Amazoness Tiger the attack target of Amazoness Archers because of its third effect), you could gain huge Life Points advantages. All those tokens with 0 ATK will attack into your Tiger so that your opponent will take 5700 points of damage right away. Then the Tokens’ effects will be activated: Another 900 points of damage! And that’s not where it stops, ‘cause the monster that your opponent originally attacked with must also make its move. That monster has to have more than 1900 ATK, ‘cause it wouldn’t attack if it had less ATK points (since you’re having two 1900-attackers on your field), which makes Cyber Dragon a nice candidate for this potential situation. Its attack will be decreased to 1600, meaning that it’ll be destroyed as soon as it attacks and your opponent loses another 300 Life Points. Now let’s see what this situation resulted in.
 

You lost two cards, while your opponent only lost one. Basically, this is a –1 disadvantage. However, the massive Life Points damage will make up for this. You have done 6900 points of battle damage in one single turn, and it wasn’t even your own turn! Maybe that’s the best part of it all. Your opponent won’t have anything left to defend himself/herself so that you can deal the final blow in your own turn. I think this strategy is good enough to be the main strategy of this deck.

When you’re using this strategy, you will also have very little chance that it will be negated by another card. Usually, a Life Points swing would be dangerous, because there could always be a Mirror Force face-down. But with this strategy, it’s your opponent who is taking out his/her own Life Points, meaning that all of his/her Sakuretsu Armors and the like will be completely useless! Not to mention how many advantages this card could provide you with, even without the use of Ojama Trio. If your opponent has 2 monsters out, this will generate a +1 advantage. If he/she had activated Scapegoat, you will most likely win the duel right away. I hope you now have discovered the true capabilities of the Amazoness Deck.

Now we’ll have to add other cards that work nice in this deck. Ceasefire fits in well. You can chain it to the attack of an opponent’s monster that targets your Amazoness Tiger to flip up another Amazoness you had face-down. This will increase the ATK of the Tiger to 1900, which might take out the attacking monster. Besides that, it deals some serious damage to the opponent, meaning that the main strategy could be even more fatal than it already was. Rush Recklessly could also be a nice tech card. The synergy it has with Amazoness Archers is insane. Increasing the ATK of the target of Amazoness Archers by 700 points for one turn, together with an Ojama Trio, ensures you’ll do an extra 2100 points of damage right away. And that’s enough to end the duel!

But with all the tech cards I’m adding, I’m creating a problem as well: Bad draws. All these techs are really nice in this deck, but only if you’ve got a couple of Amazoness out. Without them, this deck’s main strategy can’t exist and other tech cards will be useless as well. This is why the deck needs some extra defense, to buy you some time when your hand is full of these tech cards, but it doesn’t contain the Amazoness. A perfect card to add would be Scapegoat. It puts 4 Tokens on your side of the field so that you can defend yourself for a while. A card that works well with Scapegoat is Creature Swap. It’s true that this card can be a bad draw as well, but with some other defensive cards I’m adding later on, it shouldn’t be a problem. Switching a Goat Token into attack mode and swap it afterwards is one of the oldest tricks around, but I found it useful most of the time.
 

And while we’re talking about Creature Swap anyway, I would like to add Berserk Gorilla as well. Now you might think: ‘Why would you do that?’ Allow me to explain.
 

Berserk Gorilla is one of the best beaststicks around. It has an excellent 2000 ATK, which is awesome for a Level 4 monster. He has got 2 negative effects, but they aren’t as bad as you think. Having to attack each turn shouldn’t be a problem: With 2000 ATK, he’ll take almost anything out. The fact that he can’t be in face-up Defense Position isn’t that bad either, since the purpose of defending is ‘taking no Life Points damage’. Berserk Gorilla’s ATK is that high that you’ll suffer about 400 damage at max when he’s being destroyed in battle, which isn’t really something. Now here’s where the fun part begins. When you have two face-down cards on the field (Ojama Trio and Amazoness Archers), your opponent might not attack that often, since he’s afraid of your face-down cards. This might hinder the playability of Amazoness Archers, and with that being the main strategy, we can’t afford that. When you’re swapping Berserk Gorilla to your opponent, he/she will be forced to attack, which will trigger your Amazoness Archers. If your opponent decides not to attack by switching the Gorilla in defense mode, you got off with an even trade that might helped you out(you lose Creature Swap and Berserk Gorilla, but you get another card in return, while your opponent loses one of his cards  and the Berserk Gorilla you gave him/her).

I think I’ve talked far too long now, so I’ll start with the construction of the deck.

The monsters are up first.

Monsters: 19x

1 Mobius the Frost Monarch

3 Amazoness Paladin

3 Amazoness Tiger

2 Amazoness Swordswoman

1 Amazoness Chain Master

2 Command Knight

2 Berserk Gorilla

2 Gigantes

1 Sangan

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

1 Morphing Jar

The monster line-up is just like I explained in the beginning of this article. With 3 copies of Amazoness Paladin and 3 of the Amazoness Tiger, you will be able to control the field with powerful Amazoness Monsters. Amazoness Swordswoman is in twice, which is a nice number. She can safe you in tough situations or serve as a nice tech. And above all, she is a 1900 ATK monster when Command Knight is out, so she’s pretty much beatdown-orientated now. Amazoness Chain Master is in once, since her Life Points cost is pretty hefty. Running two might lead to low Life Points situations. Mobius the Frost Monarch can clear the field from S/T cards, which gives your Amazoness a clear shot at the opponent’s Life Points. When your opponent tries to recover by attacking, just play Amazoness Archers and you’ll be fine. Command Knight is in twice, so that if necessary, she can create a lock. But aside from that, she powers up all Amazoness, except for the Tiger, which is nice. Berserk Gorilla is in twice as well. His beatdown qualities shouldn’t be underestimated and in order for the combination with Creature Swap to work, multiple copies are required. Gigantes is a very good tech card here. With Cyber Dragons everywhere, you could suicide this thing into one to clear the entire field of S/T. But his real purpose in this deck is to add a little bit of swarm and it forms very nice tribute fodder for Mobius. Sangan and Breaker the Magical Warrior are stapled. Sangan can search out almost all of the Amazoness, except for the Paladin plus she can get you Command Knight and Morphing Jar. Again, he’s worth to be in this deck. Breaker is a standard card that provides some S/T removal and thus Field Control. He clears the path to your opponent’s Life Points so that your Amazoness can get off direct attacks. Morphing Jar, finally, is in to replenish bad hands, ones that are full of Creature Swap and Amazoness Archers, but no single Amazoness Monster.

Onto the Spells.

Spells: 14x

2 Creature Swap

2 Reinforcement of the Army

1 The Warrior Returning Alive

1 Scapegoat

1 Snatch Steal

1 Premature Burial

1 Heavy Storm

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

1 Graceful Charity

1 Messenger of Peace

1 Rush Recklessly

1 Smashing Ground

Creature Swap is in twice. It can be used in combination with many monsters. You could turn your Tiger, who is a 1900 ATK beaststick on your side of the field, in a 1500 ATK monster on your opponent’s side of the field. You can get off the effects of Amazoness Chain Master, Sangan and Gigantes easier to gain advantages, you could use it with Scapegoat or with Berserk Gorilla. In short: There are so many uses with this card. Reinforcement of the Army is a very solid card in here. It gives you any one of the Amazoness, except for the Tiger, or you could get Command Knight when you’re in a tough situation. The Warrior Returning Alive is also a tech card in here. Again, it can return most of the Amazoness or Command Knight and you can adapt your choice to the current situation of the duel. Scapegoat is for solid defense and monster fodder for Creature Swap. Snatch Steal can give you some control over the field, just like Premature Burial. Premature can also power up your Tiger by bringing back another Amazoness. Heavy Storm and Mystical Space Typhoon both provide solid S/T removal and thus they’re in as well. Graceful Charity...It just doesn’t need any comments. Messenger of Peace is in to provide some solid defense when you’re having a dead hand. The fact that you get to choose when to destroy it makes it a reliable protection card. Rush Recklessly has great synergy with Amazoness Archers. It can also serve as standard monster removal by activating it in response to an attack of your opponent that attacks one of your monsters. Smashing Ground is in for monster removal, even though Amazoness Archers provides that already. I believe that every single deck (I said this before) needs monster removal, and this is one very solid piece of it. You might’ve noticed the absence of Amazoness Spellcaster. I excluded him, because it’s not very beatdown-orientated. The power of this deck lies in its capability of destroying monsters in battle, and this card is not needed to do that.

And finally, the Traps.

Traps: 9x

1 Mirror Force

3 Amazoness Archers

2 Ojama Trio

1 Torrential Tribute

1 Call of the Haunted

1 Ceasefire

42 Cards total.

Mirror Force is just so gamebreaking in this deck. The synergy that it has with Amazoness Archers is just insane. With Amazoness Archers switching all of your opponent’s monsters into attack mode, you could use this to wipe out all of your opponent’s monsters! Amazoness Archers is the main card in this deck. It’s capable of dealing over 6000 points of damage in one turn and one of the best cards to use in an Amazoness Deck. Ojama Trio forms a nice combination with Amazoness Archers. In order for this combination to work, you’ll need more than one copy, but in order to prevent dead hands, you’ll need less than 3 copies. Two seems excellent to me. Torrential Tribute is another game safer. When your hand is full of useless cards, this can prevent your opponent from overextending. Call of the Haunted can bring back an Amazoness to power up your Tiger unexpectedly. Of course, this card has many more uses, too much to write down. Ceasefire can inflict mass amounts of damage as well to finish the work of Amazoness Archers. And like said earlier, it can power up your Tiger without a replay that occurs. Just like with the Spells, I left out one of the support cards for the Amazoness: Dramatic Rescue. Since this deck can avoid Sakuretsu Armor and the like in a very clever way, you won’t have to use this card very often. Smashing Ground doesn’t target, so this won’t work on that either.

Strengths of the Amazoness Deck

The main strength of the Amazoness Deck lies in its ability of inflicting mass amounts of damage. Very few decks can do over 6000 damage in one single turn like this deck can; there is almost no single deck that can deal that much damage in your opponent’s turn! With Amazoness Archers, you can clear the entire opponent’s field from monster threats so that he/she will be undefended during your own turn. If that’s the case, you can use one or more of your Amazoness to finish the game. The easy way of bringing back your Amazoness (through The Warrior Returning Alive) allows you to have the right Amazoness at the right time.

Weaknesses of the Amazoness Deck

The weakness of the Amazoness Deck lies in the bad hands it can have (just like with almost every other deck I’ve created up until now). It’s very combo-orientated and if you’ve only got one of the two cards that are required for a combination, you’re stuck with a bad hand. With the inclusion of Command Knight, Scapegoat and Messenger of Peace, this weakness has become slightly weaker, but there still is a chance of getting a dead hand. Make sure you watch out for this.

Tips when playing with the Amazoness Deck

When you’re using this deck, make sure that you make a strong opening move. A Berserk Gorilla or Command Knight is a good card to begin with, since they won’t be destroyed that often in the turn they come out. That way, you’re able quickly gain control over the field, since your Berserk Gorilla can take out a lot of monsters. If your opening monster was Command Knight, you can summon an Amazoness Paladin, which will have a lot of ATK points as well. As the game continues, you’re slowly getting the main cards from your deck in your hand. Amazoness Archers and Ojama Trio should remain in your hand until you’re actually planning to use them. But don’t think that Amazoness Archers can only be used in this combination, no. Of course, you can also use it without Ojama Trio. You might not do as much damage as you would with Ojama Trio, but you can get more advantages (in card amounts) then. If you do get all the pieces of your combination in your hand at the right time, don’t use them right away. It’s best to use it when your opponent either has a lot of monsters on the field (don’t use Ojama Trio then) or when he/she has two weak monsters on the field (do use Ojama Trio then). If you manage to let this strategy work, then your opponent will find himself/herself in a situation of which it’s very hard to get out. He suffered so many disadvantages that he/she can’t defend himself/herself anymore against all of your powered up Amazoness. Just remain cool and calm and you’ll win the duel.

A second duel with this deck is going to be hard. If your opponent already knows what you’re up to (using Amazoness Archers to destroy all of his/her monsters) he/she won’t attack that often anymore. So one tip: Try to win without using the Ojama Trio + Amazoness Archers combination in the first duel, so that you can still surprise your opponent in the second duel. If you can’t get him/her to attack, use the Creature Swap + Berserk Gorilla combination to force him/her.

As an added bonus of this article, I’ll write down the Amazoness Deck of Cameron, who came up with the idea of creating one. Here it is:

Monsters: 17x

1 Amazon Archer

1 Amazoness Chainmaster

2 Amazoness Fighter 

3 Amazoness Paladin 

3 Amazoness Swords Woman 

2 Amazoness Tiger 

1 Breaker the Magical Warrior

1 Sangan

3 Warrior Lady of the Wasteland

Spells: 16x

2 Amazoness Spellcaster 

1 Divine Sword - Phoenix Blade

2 Gaia Power 

1 Graceful Charity

1 Heavy Storm

2 My Body as a Shield 

1 Mystical Space Typhoon

2 Nobleman of Crossout 

1 Premature Burial

2 Reinforcement of the Army 

1 Snatch Steal

Traps: 7x

1 Amazoness Archers

1 Call of the Haunted

1 Dramatic Rescue

1 Mirror Force

1 Sakuretsu Armor

1 Torrential Tribute

1 Widespread Ruin

It uses Amazon Archer and Amazoness Fighter to increase the utility of Warrior Lady of the Wasteland. They add some swarm to the deck to overrun the opponent. Warrior Lady of the Wasteland is in, to feed Divine Sword – Phoenix Blade. Together with the 2 copies of Gaia Power, those Amazoness could become real big beaters.

This deck also contains Amazoness Spellcaster to take out any (face-up) monster your opponent has and that possibly forms a threat. If you can’t draw Gaia Power or Divine Sword – Phoenix Blade, then Amazoness Spellcaster could be a good draw.

My Body As a Shield was added to protect the powerful Amazoness from possible threats, as was Dramatic Rescue. It helps your Amazoness to avoid all the nasty Spell Cards that a Soul Control Deck could throw at you (mainly Brain Control and Soul Exchange). Amazoness Archers was put in to help defending the Amazoness against Flip-Effect Monsters. Magician of Faith could be really annoying, but this card can stop her from retrieving any Spell Cards. But just like in my own deck, Amazoness Archers is used to gain Field Control by destroying mass amounts of monsters with your Amazoness.

Well, that does it for this article.

I hope you enjoyed it.

Feel free to mail me all your comments and/or suggestions and/or thoughts about this article at ShineSoldier@gmail.com. If you want to say anything else or submit a deck that needs to be fixed, you can also send it to that e-mail address. Just keep in mind that fixing decks takes time, so I won’t be able to respond that quickly sometimes.

‘Til next time,

~ShineSoldier~